Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software utilized in this field. Still more particularly, it relates to a method, system and computer-usable medium for identifying verifiable statements in a corpus of text.
Description of the Related Art
Factual utterances assert something that may be true or false. In contrast, other utterances may have some other pragmatic role, such as opinions, declarations, exhortations, rhetorical exaggerations, and so forth. A subset of factual utterances is generally verifiable. For example, they may assert something that can be checked and potentially verified or falsified using authoritative sources. However, there may be many reasons why a factual utterance may not be verifiable. As an example, the factual utterance may be about the future. As another example, the factual utterance may involve information that would not be reported in an authoritative source.
Ingesting a document, such as a transcript of a speech or debate, and ingesting the verifiable statements it contains can prove challenging. Regardless, doing so is a common prerequisite for performing more complex Natural Language Processing (NLP) processing tasks, such as fact checking, search, summarization and so forth. For example, the following paragraph was included in President Obama's 2013 State of the Union speech:
“Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing. After shedding jobs for more than ten years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the last three. Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.”
Within this paragraph, there are five claims that can be verified:                the US economy shed manufacturing jobs for more than 10 years        US manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three years        Caterpillar is moving manufacturing jobs from Japan to the US        Ford is moving manufacturing jobs from Mexico to the US        Apple will make more Macs in the US in 2012 than they did in 2011        
Likewise, the initial statement of “making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing” is a declaration. However, existing known approaches are unable to reliably perform these sorts of classifications. Furthermore, while approaches are likewise known for classifying subjective statements within the body of a text, their use in classifying objective statements is typically problematic and unreliable.